(no subject)

[always_enduphere]

The chapel is small.  Built for mourners on the edge of the dead, its walls are clean and white, sturdy, meant for shelter.  Wood and brick, not meant to contain the darkness now held within them, twitching in the form of the body strapped prone to a hasty trap made of splintered pews.

It's quiet inside, removed enough from the city that the only sounds are rattling breaths from the body in chains, snatches of anxious voices and the occasional rumble of the floor, creaking and groaning from unseen onslaught, but holding.

There's an energy in the air, an electricity that raises hackles along with hairs, pouring from the ravaged body in an angry throb, but within the trap it can't do more than rattle walls, beneath the chains that smoke its skin, it can't do more than hiss curses on borrowed breath, and promise agonies yet to come.

In the center of the trap, the thing wearing Dean Winchester bares its teeth, blinking black towards any with stomach left to look at him.

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[always_enduphere]

That voice is enough to make Dean forget where he is. It's not hell, but it's somewhere like it, the air too close, the fire not only on his skin but down his throat, in his lungs. He's stretched wide but stoppered up, can feel the darkness inside him but can't get it out.

It's too much. He longed for hell and got its shadow, and that's enough. He can't take much more.

Dean parts his blood smeared lips and croaks, "Red."

[forthedog]

He smiles, very small, half twisted with something he doesn't even have a name for, except it's the final grown end of something that started in a place and a time he can't even identify. And he steps forward, because something else he's always known since they went into that room together is when to keep his distance and when to close the distance up.

"Soon." He lifts a hand and combs his fingers through Dean's hair. Familiar now. Almost ritual. "I'm so fucking sorry, Dean. I didn't see it in time. I should have."

[always_enduphere]

Dean smiles, too, for the fingers, a barely there twitch of lips, but then his eyes open and he remembers. Where he is. What he's been doing.

"Should've," he agrees, but he means something different, and the thing inside him knows it, punching forward against Mike's solar plexus with a gargled laugh.

[forthedog]

He grunts hard, briefly pained. Otherwise he doesn't move, grips one end of the frame and hangs on. This is what this thing has been doing the whole time, drawing them in just enough to hurt them, to hurt Dean, to shove them all away from each other again. Away from Dean.

Not this time. Not here.

"It's okay," he breathes, hand still curved against Dean's scalp. "It's okay. We're here now. We're gonna fix this."

[always_enduphere]

"If you don't," says Dean, eyes watering as the darkness twists his head against Mike's fingers, tries to make them pull, "Don't let anybody do anything crazy. No more deals."

Another push, but Dean holds it back, feels the trickle of something wet and warm from his nose. "No more fucking death."

[forthedog]

He laughs, short and hard. "If we don't, I'm not gonna try to stop an insane goddamn angel tearing apart the fucking universe to get you back."

He lifts both hands, frames Dean's face the way he had the night all the curtains came rippling down. He should get back, he should be afraid, but he's not and he won't be, he won't make a liar out of himself.

"Doesn't matter. It can't have you." He smiles, and like everything's always been under the surface, it's gentle with a steel spine. "Death is just death."

[always_enduphere]

"Not where I come from," Dean murmurs, head dropped and exhausted beyond the telling. "There's no peace, there's no end. Death is just a door to another world of endless suffering. My family's been trading our lives for each other's for decades. It's gotta stop somewhere."

[forthedog]

"No, there's no end." Somehow he's gone from standing close to nearly holding Dean against him, holding onto him, blood and sweat and the stink of sulfur and death, and again he's thinking of that little room, taking Dean out of the chains, lowering him down.

He doesn't have the power to do that here.

Red.

"You let us work now." His cheeks are wet, though he doesn't remember crying. "You understand how much everyone here loves you? That's not weakness."

[always_enduphere]

You're my weak spot. You are, and I'm yours, and what we'll do for each other, how far we'll go...They're using it against us.

It's one of the last things Dean said to his brother before he went to hell, and the man that said it never came back. Dean's never been the same, never truly escaped the place for all that he was airlifted out of there, but god. He wants to. He wants to be done with this, fiercely wants it for the first time in years.

"Not weakness," he says, and can't make it all the way to hope, but something close to it. "Mike. Be careful."

[forthedog]

"Careful as I can be." Which isn't careful at all. He's here, isn't he? Standing inside a fucking devil's trap. Reaching out, like he shouldn't. Like no sane man would.

He left sane down in the ash. It never did him much good anyway.

Slow - reluctant, yes - he steps away again. He's not afraid, doesn't particularly care what this thing feels like trying, but they both need to conserve strength now. There isn't a lot of time.

"Just hang on. This is almost done."